50. A Simple and Accurate Maximum Power Point Tracking Algorithm for Photovoltaic Systems

Many techniques have been proposed to seek the solar photovoltaic system’s maximum power point from which one can list the following algorithms Perturb and Observe (P&O) algorithm, the Incremental Conductance (IC) algorithm, among others. Every technique has its relative merits and limitations essentially in terms of stability and ease of implementation. This chapter presents a new algorithm for Maximum Power Point Tracking in PVS. The algorithm uses the Golden Section method to search for the point at which the derivative of the input power versus voltage is zero. The power versus voltage characteristics of the photovoltaic system is a unimodal function making the Golden Section Search technique very suitable. The process of searching uses a variable step to shrink the search space, hence helping to reach the optimum point of the function, the maximum power point, within a small number of iterations. The basic advantage of this search technique is the reduction of tracking convergence time, in comparison with classical techniques with slow convergence time that can lead to instability. The proposed Golden Section Search technique algorithm converges rapidly therefore reducing the number of oscillations due to perturbations and preserving system stability. Matlab/Simulink is used to simulate the Golden search based MPPT.